Thread by @karenvaites

This piece continues the @nytimes coverage pattern when it comes to K-12 education:

An over-weighting of identity politics, to the exclusion of other major issues concerning parents.

🧵

By @thomasfullerNYT:
nytimes.com/2022/02/16/us/…

Did you know that San Francisco declined to reopen schools in Fall, 2020 even though local COVID positivity was less than 1%… even as other districts opened at similar (in NYC) and higher (in sun belt) rates?

The NYT piece does not tell you this.

https://twitter.com/karenvaites/status/1319221865873874944

Did you know that SF schools remained closed until Spring, 2021… as most schools across the US reopened? (Reminder: 60% of US schools had opened by mid-October ‘20.)

And that SF parents protested the closures at the time?

@thomasfullerNYT doesn’t get into these details.

https://twitter.com/jennifersey/status/1335327678832906240

Did you know that SFUSD faced a massive budget shortfall this year, and that school board members were ignoring the advice of third party auditors?

You wouldn’t know it from the NYT coverage.

https://twitter.com/recallsfboe/status/1491794878547722241

How do I know it?

San Francisco parents talked about it a LOT.

https://twitter.com/sfparents/status/1466605948076638213

Did you know that SFUSD uses the lowest-rated elementary English Language Arts curricula in America, designed around a widely-critiques approach called Balanced Literacy, and that this, too, is a source of longtime parent activism?

https://twitter.com/mgpotente/status/1488971936436670465

Parents are very tuned into the weak and inequitable reading outcomes in SFUSD.

Yet I don’t believe the issue has ever made the NYT coverage of what’s happening in the district.

https://twitter.com/sfparents/status/1447758563451944970

About those concerns with the literacy approach in the district…

Did you know that SF has some of the most glaring inequities of any urban district, with a 58 POINT GAP in black vs white reading outcomes?

NYT doesn’t tell you this, either...

sanzi.substack.com/p/7-hour-meeti…

That last one has to be the most wild.

If you are going to center race in your article… go deep enough to talk about the district’s obscene outcomes gap in literacy, which is matched by a 58 point gap in math.

But no…

We get coverage that makes it sound like Asian families’ access to selective high schools and the school renaming debacle were THE issues for parents.

Clearly they were factors, esp the renaming-not-reopening.

Yet every parent concern is not wrapped up in identity politics.

This is mirrored in other NYT coverage.

In Minneapolis, parents have protested citywide over literacy outcomes, and lack of a literacy plan almost cost the superintendent his job. Zero NYT coverage of this issue.

We’ve only heard abt MPS’s desegregation plans.

🧵:

https://twitter.com/karenvaites/status/1467120297350414337

And y’all know that @elizashapiro is basically on a crusade to get rid of selective school admissions in NYC…

While ignoring:
– parent protests abt weak outcomes
– widespread concerns about the balanced literacy curriculum in NYC schools
– persistently flat outcomes systemwide

https://twitter.com/karenvaites/status/1406227176761004032

Your periodic reminder that @elizashapiro, the full time education reporter for NYC, is not even aware of the multiple urban districts (Baltimore, Detroit, Guilford County) who’ve improved reading/math outcomes districtwide in recent years, via curriculum-centered improvement.

It continues to concern me that we can’t get reporting – even education reporting! – that centers the most fundamental questions in K–12 education:

Are kids being taught to read? Which kids are and which aren’t? Why?

Parents care deeply about this. NYT reporters, not so much.

I’m not saying that these school admission issues and electoral dynamics are uninteresting or unimportant.

They simply aren’t THE story, and the paper of record keeps missing that.

Every time parents open their mouths in the article, they talk about school closures and a track record of poor governance.

But most of the piece is about the identity-oriented stuff.

Listen to the parents.

Journalists & pundits are working overtime to make the SF election fit into culture wars / political frameworks.

SF parents seem much more animated by school closures and the broad incompetence of the board than anything. This piece feels right:

https://twitter.com/karenvaites/status/1494083003110371332

But here we have another NYT journalist whose chart screams “broad coalition of parents”… but whose framing of the election (read the whole thread) attempts to paint the election as “low turnout,” with many voters animated by Lowell admissions.

https://twitter.com/danagoldstein/status/1493978464055173122

The facts don’t support that framing.

“If trend holds, more voters will have recalled the three school board members than elected them in 2018.”

https://twitter.com/jilltucker/status/1494114685733400581

It does feel like an awful lot of people trying to frame this election to fit a narrative.

Co-sign this praise for @jilltucker. Hope you are following her; she’s a front runner for America’s best pandemic era education reporter.

https://twitter.com/ryankost/status/1494177303219216386

.@laurameckler's piece shares many of same issues. One line RE budget issues, but mostly this odd "people rebelled against the board's social justice efforts" framing.

Clearly it doesn't mention the literacy advocacy, BC those ARE social justice efforts.
washingtonpost.com/education/2022…

Those parents in the thread above, who are trying to improve the curriculum?

They are on a social justice mission, too.

They even use that language.

No one’s covering these efforts, in spite of their growth.

https://twitter.com/karenvaites/status/1494274040298622980